


Tumblr Ficlets

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Angels, Angels are Dicks, Body Horror, Demon Dean Winchester, F/M, Gen, M/M, Novak Family, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 12:27:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 6,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7976782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short fic originally posted to Tumblr, usually inspired by someone else's photo/pic/gifset. All chapters are complete unto themselves; new ficlets will be posted as new chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Purgatory Collection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hiatus between s7 and s8 was a free-for-all of Purgatory speculation. All the Purgatory-spec ficlets I posted to Tumblr during that time are in this chapter.

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/23388754125/bedp0tato-looking-up-by-aribix-in).)

In Purgatory, night is pitch black and starless and crawling with shadows of menace. Day is brighter, but still unsettling: hazy colour that comes from nowhere, cold blue or sickly green or rusty, bloody red. It’s not light, but vapour, pouring down from above and through from around. It’s not fog; it doesn’t conceal. It gives definition to the dark things.

That doesn’t make anything better. It just means Dean can see all the things he can’t kill.

* * *

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/23892159956/euclase-the-throne-by-micha%C3%ABl-brack-dante).)

Dante got one thing right: there are angels in Purgatory. Living ones, sealed up there by God at the moment of their creation. Made specifically to be the caretakers of that realm.

Cas is fascinated by them. Technically, they’re his brothers and sisters--now the few remaining living siblings he can claim--but they’re far from angelic. Their lives here, among the monsters, wholly cut off from all the rest of Creation, have made them…different.

They’re fascinated by Cas, as well. He’s the reason their realm was empty for a time; he’s the reason they had to be alone there for the first time since they came into existence. And, eventually, he was the reason all the souls of Purgatory came back.

Dean intrigues them, too. They’ve never seen a human soul before.

* * *

(Inspired by [this photoset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/24459188911/dissected-dali-van-gogh-and-picasso-by-ddb).)

The first time Dean sees one of Purgatory’s souls splayed out on the ground like a torn-up sack of meat--the rendered loser of some vicious, snarling, tooth-and-claw fight; not killed, because everything’s dead here already, but _stopped_ , briefly--it’s strange and surreal and wrong. He can’t stop looking.

Cas’s hand on his shoulder is a gentle weight, but startling nonetheless. Dean looks up from the mess to find Cas watching him almost apologetically. “They’re monstrous inside, as well, Dean,” he says, with that new, nervous tone he uses when he knows he’s treading into dangerous territory. “There is little you would recognise.”

Dean looks down again, his gaze drawn irresistibly back to the spill and splash of unfamiliar entrails and viscera. In his mind, he fills in the blank at the end of Cas’s sentence: _Despite your rack in Hell, and all the things you split open there._

* * *

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/24785218897/maria-domenica-lazzari-aka-laddolorata-the).)

Claire starts dreaming of shifting, shadowed menace. Of unsettling noises and even more skin-crawling silences. Of close, desperate violence, snapping teeth and slashing claws and thick gouts of blood.

The pain lingers after she wakes, so sharp and real that she stumbles out of bed to her mirror, pulls up her nightshirt and shakes in disbelief at the sight of her clean, unbroken skin.

Not all the dreams are painful. Some are nothing but heavy blackness that Claire wakes from with a jolt, heart hammering in restless worry. Some are endless, excruciating coils of watchful tension that leave her exhausted and hollow-eyed come morning.

Every night, she dreams.

Finally, after weeks, she opens her eyes to the darkness of her bedroom and hitches out a breath: “Castiel.” She’s too tired to move. She hurts. She hasn’t spoken his name in years; she prays it now. “Castiel, please.”

The next time she falls asleep, in the welter of _sliceclawrasptearburn_ , she can just make out his voice: _I’m sorry, Claire._

(Or maybe, the next time she falls asleep, there's just the welter of _sliceclawrasptearburn_ , and no answer from Castiel at all. The same the next night, and the next, and the night after that.

Maybe prayers can't be heard in Purgatory.)

* * *

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/24803586650/hundredthousandyears-this-exists-dean-only).)

Dean only has to see the thing once before he swears off tentacle porn for life.

* * *

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/24805051822/the-bloody-message-printed-in-stark-relief-on-a).)

The bloody message printed in stark relief on a pale outcrop of stone constitutes the first time Dean has to explain something in Purgatory to Cas, instead of the other way around.

That doesn’t mean he has no questions of his own, though. “Who the hell wrote it _here_? And why?”

“Many of Purgatory’s souls lived on Earth, among humans, sometimes _as_ humans,” Cas points out, giving the words on the rock a long, considering look. “It’s only to be expected that you would share some culture-based associations.”

“You’re saying monsters watched _Return to Oz_ and got freaked out by the Wheelers, too.” Dean tries not to think about what it means that those monsters then had some reason to reference them _here_. He’s hated those squealy fuckers since he was six. “Well, score one for movie magic.”

* * *

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/26201652184/alrightdays-by-stephen-poullas-but-dean).)

But Dean might be on the other side--God, _Dean_ \--waiting, fighting for his life, _dying_. Sam ignores all the signs and opens it anyway.

* * *

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/30232753760/alecshao-gunter-brus-aktion-ana-1964).)

Purgatory was a realm of souls, which are constant and unchanging; Purgatory was, therefore, static. While Dean was there, he never got hungry or thirsty or tired or--despite Castiel’s fears--hurt. He never missed conversation or comfort or touch.

When he made it back to Earth--where he _lived_ \--he’d forgotten the need to eat or drink or sleep. He’d forgotten that he could be wounded. He had only the dimmest memory of what it felt like to bleed, or to need. To crave.

He was reminded soon enough.

* * *

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/33068074404/spoonandfork-cages-asylum-series-by-heather).)

“When I was alive, I kept a bird.” Castiel hears the siren clearly, even though her mouth is sewn shut. The stitches are small and tight and jagged, and blood blooms gently around the coarse thread as her lips do not move. “Wherever I stayed, I let it fly free. Let it eat the spiders in the corners of my rooms, the ants that ran along the baseboards. Let it flap against the windows and shit on the carpet. I liked to watch it fly, so I let it fly free. But I couldn’t trust it in the sky, so it had to stay inside.”

She leans down to where he cowers against the base of a thick, stunted tree; she brushes her bloody mouth against his, lightly, lightly. Her threads catch on his dry lips and part them. “I loved you at first,” she tells him softly. A drop of her filthy blood slips into his mouth, and Castiel tastes her. He tastes her, and sees Dean, and wants. “You let me out, and I loved you. But you were just another cage, angel. A smaller one.”

Dean kneels astride him, hand on his throat, fingertips digging hard along the line of his jaw. Castiel watches him fearfully, and tastes something bitter on his tongue. He thinks it’s shame.

“I don’t love you anymore,” Dean says.


	2. "Meg, Cas? Seriously?"

(Inspired by [this gifset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/23790281266/wheresyourmoose-top-7-episodes-of-supernatural).)

Eventually, Dean can’t let it slide any longer: “Meg, Cas? Seriously?” Cas just stands there blinking at him, so he elaborates, “You know she _possessed Sam_ once, right?”

“Did you?” Cas tilts his head and turns to where she’s sitting with her legs stretched out, feet propped on the table, and Dean throws his hands in the air in defeat because, dammit, that little piece of backstory only made Cas _curious_. “What was that like?”

Meg doesn’t look up from her trashy magazine. “Roomy.”


	3. The AU In Which The Novaks Are All Vessels

(Inspired by [this photoset, and the comment by anneretic](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/27478879425/anneretic-mydarkenedeyes-amin).)

At first it was a comfort, having Amelia and Claire so close; a blessing, that the angels they hosted had chosen to follow Castiel, not Raphael.

The curse of it didn’t become apparent until Rachel, whose steadfastness and practicality had so suited Amelia, drew her sword on Castiel in an empty warehouse, horrified by his plans and willing to sacrifice herself to stop them.

Then--after--Castiel’s injury muted Jimmy as well. When Castiel told him, “You must have faith that my ends will justify these means,” Jimmy could only listen in the numbness of shock.

But when Castiel stood over Claire, her small body bracketed by the afterimage of Balthazar’s burnt wings, Jimmy raged and raged, screaming his censure and grief and impotence into the void.

Castiel said, “I’m sorry.” Jimmy knew he was.

It didn’t change a thing.


	4. Endverse

(Inspired by [this gifset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/28608764186/imagine-losing-an-appendage-cas-said-once-when).)

“Imagine losing an appendage,” Cas said once, when Dean hadn’t asked and, grinding his teeth as he stared fixedly down at maps of newly-discovered hot zones, quite obviously didn’t want to know. “No, imagine losing one of your senses--no. Imagine losing a sense that is the faculty of an appendage--”

He doesn’t recall what he’d taken that day; he knows, though, it was one of the drugs that made Dean resent having to carry on a conversation with him. But Cas’s back had been aching intolerably under the nerveless, incapacitated weight of his wings--despite the pills, which could do wonders for his mood but nothing for his pain--and it suddenly seemed very important that Dean should understand what it was to be graceless.


	5. Dean's started picking up girls again.

Dean’s started picking up girls again.

Sam’s not entirely sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, Dean’s not exactly getting any younger, but the girls sure are, so there’s a level on which it’s kind of pathetic. On the other hand, Dean was basically a monk that whole year before Purgatory--longer, even; since Lisa--and it only got worse after the thing with the Amazons, and as much as Sam thought Dean could be kind of disgusting about sex, knowing he wasn’t even _trying_ had felt really, really wrong. On the _third_ hand--because they’re Winchesters, after all, and just two hands would be just too normal--

“Aren’t you--” Sam stops himself from saying _jealous_. Something changed between Dean and Cas in Purgatory--or maybe Cas finally getting out, Cas finally being around, Dean finally getting him back, is what changed things--but he still doesn’t know what, exactly. He doesn’t want to assume, but he does want to _know_ , so he redirects to a slightly more diplomatic, “Don’t you mind?”

Cas follows his nod to where Dean’s standing at the bar giving a very interested brunette a slow grin and all his attention. “Why would I mind?” he asks, squinting a little. It’s that look he gets when he thinks he’s missed something of vital human importance and is bracing himself for either enlightenment or, more likely, even deeper confusion--and that’s probably an answer in and of itself, Sam thinks with relief. He’s already shaking his head, smiling, about to brush off the whole question, when suddenly the furrow in Cas’s brow clears. “Oh. Because of the bond between Dean and me? Because, having cleansed his body of decay and rebuilt it for his resurrection, I have perfect knowledge of his every carnal atom? Because, having cleansed his soul of corruption and held it firmly within my grace, I know him with an intimacy unsurpassed by any but a true soulmate--by yourself, Sam? Because, after Dean spent decades being rent asunder by the ceaseless torments of Hell, I was the instrument that reunited his body and soul in one ecstatic moment of purest physical and spiritual completion?”

Sam stares.

“No, I don’t mind,” Cas finishes, and folds his hands primly on the table. “I’m hardly proprietary.”


	6. Emmanuel

(Inspired by [this picset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/38271988257/anneretic-sometimes-it-takes-several-months-of).)

Almost a year of drinking you can’t seem to stop no matter how much it makes Sammy worry, or sours your stomach, or numbs you just enough to keep going but not enough to help. Almost a year of nightmares; not of Hell, for a change--you don’t wake up with your heart seizing in terror or with self-sick bile crawling at the back of your throat--but of deep, hollow helplessness. Almost a year of waking up, every day, exhausted and aching. Almost a year of moving a fucking coat that no one’s ever going to wear again from piece of shit car to piece of shit car, as if having it with you makes any difference or does any good. Almost a year of grief.

And then you look up from a dead demon and he’s there. You’re welcomed into a home that’s not his and he’s _there_. Almost a year, and he’s stricken and amnesiac and _alive_ , and you’re torn clean through with longing. You know, then, it wasn’t just grief. You know what you were without him. You know.


	7. Bunker

Nina Simone’s on the turntable and Dean’s on his bed, his back to his pillow and his head tipped against the wall, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. His fingers are loose around the empty cut-glass tumbler balanced on his thigh. The music’s got a driving beat, fast and minor-key, and Nina’s wailing for salvation, but Dean’s got his eyes closed and his mouth turned up at the corners like it’s the most relaxing lullabye since ‘Hey Jude’.

Cas sits in the desk chair next to the bed, straight-backed and still. His head is cocked slightly, his expression distant but intent as he listens to the music. Sam doesn’t know if Dean even knows Cas is there until Dean cracks open one eye and slants Cas a look; unnoticed, he studies Cas’s absorption for a long, appraising moment, then closes his eyes again, satisfied.

Silently, Sam turns and follows the hallway back to the library.


	8. "I'm afraid I might kill myself."

(Inspired by [this gifset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/44438185947/he-kills-himself-its-just-something-he-does-he).)

He kills himself. It’s just something he does. He provokes archangels and Hell’s upper management and black-blooded monsters from before the dawn of time. He explodes and dissolves and forgets everything and remembers more than he can handle. He cuts himself off from Heaven. He lives as a human without a single goddamn clue. He traps himself in Purgatory.

He comes back and calls it a punishment, _worse every time_. You understand what he means: once you’ve decided something’s worth dying for, who the fuck is God to say different? To say there’s something more important still out there for you to do? To say that even after you’ve given your _life_ , you still have more to give?

(You’ve heard stories about people who are thankful to have survived jumping off bridges because the second they started to fall they realised they didn’t really want to die. You’ve never really understood those people. Maybe once, a little, when you were short months away from Hell and staring down your black-eyed fate like you actually thought wanting something different might make it blink. But then you woke up.)

Yeah, you understand. And when he says, _I’m afraid I might kill myself,_ you understand what he doesn’t say, too: _I’m afraid that, if I do, I’ll just come back again._

So when he’s gone (back to Heaven like there’s nothing wrong, Alfie’s bloody body under his hands and no expression on his face), you pray. You pray because you remember what it was like when you didn’t, not once through that aching almost-year of being sure he was dead for keeps. You pray because it would be a stupid thing to do if there were no one out there to hear it. You pray because it means there has to be.

You pray because one of the things he’s afraid of is the one thing you’ve got to count on.


	9. Castiel's thoughts are treacherous.

(inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/46795762298/ineffableunicorns-everythings-back-in-order).)

Your thoughts are treacherous. You can’t remember a time when they weren’t.

(This is a lie. Once, you looked upon a slimy, squirming, beautiful thing on the shore and listened to your brother affirm God’s intentions. Your thoughts were pealing hosannas of faithful certainty.)

Gabriel turned deserter. Anna tore her grace from herself and fell willingly to humanity. The Righteous Man was allowed to languish in Hell until the first seal was broken. Uriel conspired with the Adversary. Free will, God’s greatest gift to humanity, meant nothing. You thought, constantly, _This is wrong._ You acted on that thought: you questioned. You doubted. You rebelled.

(This is inaccurate. You questioned and doubted and rebelled, and you thought, _This is wrong._ )

You were murdered. You were resurrected. You were the only angel who truly understood what it meant to oppose Raphael’s petulant fundamentalism. You thought of the responsibility of choice as an honour; then, a burden. Then a trap.

(This is foolishness and arrogance. You were only an angel. You were incompatible with choice. You understood nothing.)

You have so much blood on your hands, caked there old and brown; Samandriel’s is a fresh red stain. You lie to Dean. You obey the commands of Heaven. You kill and kill and kill, and most of your victims are not demons. The thought that remains with you, constantly, is, _This is right._

~~(Sometimes you can recognise Naomi’s imprint upon your mind. You feel her influence guiding your reason along stark, unwilling paths. Your thoughts are _treacherous_.)~~

You lie. You obey. You kill. You do not think.

This is right.


	10. Lafitte

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/47816581176/screencappingladies-809-citizen-fang-you).)

“You remind me of someone,” you told him after spending a whole two days swaying naturally around each other in the diner’s cramped kitchen, the narrow space behind the counter. The way he held a knife had been nagging at you: the set of his hand, the bend of his knuckles, the angle of his wrist as he scraped cuttings off the chopping block or into a pot. The shape of his slow half-smile and its creases in his cheeks. He paused when you said it, his burly arms dusted to the elbows in flour and cornmeal, and slanted a gleaming-eyed look up from the prep table’s pile of chicken and shrimp. You shook your head and laughed it off. “Can’t for the life of me put my finger on who.”

*

“He’s not--” But Dean cuts himself off, turning instead to toss another blood-soaked dishtowel into the trash. You wonder if he was going to say _a bad man_ or _a monster_ or maybe just _evil_. When he faces you again, all he says is, “He saved my life.” There’s something weary in him, something resigned, like he thinks you won’t believe him.

Your mama’d taught you her family’s gumbo recipe by making you piece it together yourself. “My grandaddy didn’t pass down no recipe cards, honey,” she’d said, hands and wrists working quick and sure as she shucked a pile of oysters. Her smile’d been broader in her voice than it was on her face. “Y'ain’t gonna find it written down nowhere. If you can’t get it right by taste and intuition, you can’t get it right.” You’d spent your teenaged years making batch after batch after batch until, one day, it tasted _right_.

You answer Dean softly--“Mine, too.”--and pour more bleach onto the tiles.


	11. Post-Crypt

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/48521501561/cass-mouth-trails-lightly-along-the-arch-of-your).)

Cas’s mouth trails lightly along the arch of your brow, the orbit of your eye, and something inside you shifts. Not the bones he’s tracing gently with slow drags and soft presses of his lips; after all, he fixed what he broke. Your bones are solid under your unmarred skin. The teeth that scattered in bloody shards across the floor of the crypt are rooted firm and whole in your mouth. Your blood pumps tidily, contained.

Something inside you _shifts_.

(You were eleven years old the first time you dislocated your shoulder. You were surprised by how easily it happened, how suddenly you went from undamaged and free to immobilised by the hot stab and throb of pain.

Your dad, preoccupied with wanting to finish off the poltergeist you were hunting, was perfunctory about shoving the joint back into place. You cried as he did it, but you didn’t cry out, and you didn’t complain. You knew it was a necessary hurt.)

(Electrocution left you feeling bruised all over, bone-weary and too easily winded. You didn’t want to die, but the way you felt--the way it was unrelenting--you took small relief in knowing you wouldn’t have to put up with it for long.

But when the reverend’s hands settled on you, it all went away. Even before you found out that a healthy man’s life had been taken to replace your failing one, you were convinced your new heartbeat was arrhythmic and wrong.)

(It was the demon, not your dad, who tore up your insides ‘til you choked blood, who drove a truck into your car at 60 miles per hour, who wrecked your body past the point of keeping you in it.

It was your dad, not the demon, who forced you back in.)

(Every night, Alistair left you mutilated; every morning, he found you pristine. Your agreement to get off the rack came when you decided your disfigurement should stick.

After the resurrection--even before you remembered everything--you despaired at the sight of yourself in the mirror, refigured.)

(Lucifer broke your body with Sam’s rough hands, Sam’s hard fists, a look of cold hatred on Sam’s face. You took it and took it and took it, because if Sam was gone, you were gonna wear his leaving for the whole world to see.

Cas pressed two fingertips to your forehead, and it was all taken back. The evidence of Sam having left wasn’t on you anymore, only inside you. That whole year with Lisa, you didn’t know how the world couldn’t see it anyway.)

The last time Cas touched you, it was to ruin your body; then, to repair it. His touches now are tender and deliberate.

You accept them, and touch him in return. You wrap your arms around him and hold him to the wholeness of your body. You move with him until the shifting, shying thing inside you goes still.


	12. Naomi

Castiel’s extraction from Purgatory does not go smoothly.

When Ion deposits him in the chair across your desk, he’s barely conscious. He’s filthy. He stinks of doubt and abomination. His wings shiver with pain in their pinions.

You look to Ion, whose vessel has been damaged, who’s missing feathers in great, claw-shaped streaks. Who is stained with the ashes of your siblings’ spilled and spent grace. “Thank you, Ion,” you say kindly, though he’s done nothing more than perform as ordered. “Heal yourself and prepare to return him to Earth when I’m finished.”

Ion nods. By the time he crosses the threshold, he is already obediently tidier.

You sit for a time, alone with Castiel, waiting for him to regain his senses. You consider him: his indiscipline, his rebellion. His resurrections. His killing fields.

His mess.

Castiel is a _mess_.

Finally, his eyes slit open. With obvious effort, he raises his head and looks at you, at your office; when he recognises--when he realises--he lowers it again in slow collapse. “I shouldn’t be here,” he says. His voice is broken and weary. “I chose to--”

You wait.

Eventually, he repeats, “I chose.” He sounds resigned.

The rightness of your purpose swells inside you. You stand; you round your desk. He doesn’t look up as you approach. “I’m not concerned with choice, Castiel,” you say, and summon the necessary instrument to hand.


	13. "I can't stay, Dean."

“I can’t stay, Dean.”

Of course he can’t. “Of course you can’t. Why is it this time? Don’t like the food? Armchair too lumpy? Sam takin’ up too much space for you?”

“When Metatron bled me of my grace, he encouraged me to live a full, human life. Find someone to be with; have a family.”

“And you’re just gonna do what he says? After--Jesus, Cas. Is that even what you want? A family? A human family?”

“I don’t know. Mostly, I think I don’t want to be alone.”

“You’re not alone here.”

“I deserve to be alone. However much I--want--” Pause. “That’s beside the point. Metatron wants me to live my life so he’ll have a story to enjoy at the end of it.”

“What’s the plan, then? Purgatory Round Two? You gonna grow another beard and wander the desert, make sure nothing interesting happens to you your whole life?” Dean bites back the other obvious option: _Gonna kill yourself before you’ve lived any life at all?_

“Maybe. I’d settle for a life where my choices don’t result in world-destroying consequences. But if I stay--Dean, you’d be part of my story. You and Sam. And your lives have been story enough for angels.”

“Fuck that. _Fuck_ that, Cas. Quit giving shit up to protect me.”


	14. He ain't heavy

(Inspired by [this photoset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/59279002467/captainamerica-in-middle-earth-lannistxrs).)

He takes you from the church, pulling you, carrying you. Your head is thick with exhaustion, your thoughts cloudy and reeling; still, you think you should be supporting yourself. You wish you could. You can’t. You never can. You get your feet under yourself only enough to stumble and fall and drag him down with you.

“I got you, little brother,” he says, down with you in the mud and grit. He’s wrong about that--you were ready to die a few minutes ago, and he’s been ready to die for years; he’s got nothing, and wants even less--but you’re too tired to argue. Especially if believing it makes him happy. “C'mon, Sammy, I got you.”

_Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old,_ you remember telling him once, with the same sudden clarity you remembered Sir Galahad at the Round Table, and riding pack mules in the Grand Canyon. Memories of looking in from the outside: of wanting to be clean and pure and righteous, long before you knew for sure you weren’t; of wanting to be a normal family on a normal vacation, long before you knew enough to realise that trip had been a hunt. Of wanting him to see you as an adult, long before you knew just how much he’d never be able to count on you as one.

He’s got his hands fisted in your shirt, bracing you against the side of the car. Holding you up, again. With cold wind sluicing over you and the overhead flares of falling angels making you flinch, it’s hard to tell, but you think you can feel him shaking.

You already regret letting him talk you out of dying.

You haven’t been Sammy for a long, long time.


	15. All sorts of nasty ideas.

(Inspired by [this gifset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/64349805122/youre-a-little-disappointed-at-first-you-knew).)

You’re a little disappointed, at first. You knew, of course, he wasn’t anything like innocent--not with that pedigree; not with that body--but you hadn’t realised just how far he’d gone. You hadn’t realised he was the Righteous Man, fable of Hell, in the tormented flesh.

You’d entertained so many thrilling ideas about introducing him to the worst things one human body can do to another: those strong hands to true violence, those pretty eyes to true horror. That smart attitude to true atrocity. You’d made plans, plotted out scenarios. Indulged in giddy schoolgirl fantasies.

Slowly, savouring every smoky drag, you draw the questing tendril of yourself back out of his gore-soaked, guilt-drenched memories; slip back out of his slack, sinful mouth, and into your own. You consider the merits of a more mature kind of partnership, now: the kind where everyone involved knows what they can do, and knows how to make it happen. Knows how to want it, even if they hate themselves for it.

Thumbing away a fresh tear from the corner of his eye, you smile.

Virginity’s always been overrated.


	16. "He actually prayed for this."

(Inspired by [this gifset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/68667800294/theseweirddreams-he-asked-me-to-do-it-castiel).)

You’ve never felt fragile, but then, you suppose people generally don’t. The ground becomes uneven underfoot, and you’re surprised by your scraped-up, gravel-studded knee. The oven mitt bunches in your grip on the corner of a pan, and you’re astonished by the burn. The knife slips while chopping vegetables, and you’re genuinely bewildered when your skin parts and bleeds. It’s so easy to be undamaged; over time--time spent without injury--you come to assume that injury must be difficult to achieve. They’re always unexpected, the little reminders that, no, it’s the simplest thing in the world.

You’ve been injured in all the common, minor ways. You’ve scraped your knee and burned your hand and cut your finger and cursed your clumsiness and suffered the pain. Just like everyone else, you know the fragility of your body. Just like everyone else, you never quite manage to believe it.

When he tells you, _Boil the water,_ you turn up the heat immediately, before you think to ask why. When he tells you, _Be unafraid,_ you find that you are.

There’s no surprise when you lower your hand into the roiling, steaming water and feel no pain. You’re not astonished when your skin brushes harmlessly against the scalding metal of the pot. You feel, instead, overwhelming certainty and joy. You hold your hand in boiling water and are uninjured. You submitted to his test, and proved your faith and his intentions. It feels **right**.

When he tells you, _We will make miracles together,_ wonder rises within you like a tide.

You believe him.


	17. He dismisses himself.

(Inspired by [this gif](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/73822736350/he-dismisses-his-horror-at-the-things-that-are).)

He dismisses his horror at the things that are happening to his brother; the things he has caused his brother to suffer; the things he has caused his brother, however unconsentingly, to do. He blinks back his brimming tears and bottles his quaking breath in his chest and pushes his hand past his face as if his discomforts are all strictly physical, as if he can brush them aside.

Given the choices he’s made, he believes himself forbidden the privilege of public regret.

He dismisses himself. It’s far from the first time, even in the small fraction of his lifespan you’ve spent with him. He relies heavily on appearances, however much they might elide him; sometimes, as now, especially when they do. He must appear confident, even when besieged by doubt. He must appear loyal, even when committing a betrayal. He must appear careless, even when the wound is mortal.

He lost his ability to keep up appearances many mortal wounds ago.

He tries to look at you, but his glance can’t even rise to your face before it shies away, defeated. You want to say, _I see you._ You want to say, _I’ve seen you._ You want to say, _Whatever I see, I won’t stop looking._

You say nothing, and spare you both his dismissal.


	18. Weapons aren't intentions.

(Inspired by [this gifset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/81152744514/im-riversong-you-have-to-know-with-the-mark).)

Weapons aren’t intentions.

It’s something your dad told you, back when he first taught you to shoot. “Weapons aren’t intentions, son. It’s up to you to know what you’re going to do with a gun before you pick it up. Make sure you know how to use it, and make sure you use it right.”

You’ve liked the feel of a gun in your hand ever since. Or a knife, or a lighter. You’ve always liked putting your shoulder to the kick of a shotgun loaded with salt rounds, or holding your steady hand around the reverb of the Colt. You like how easy it is to slice with iron or silver, the lack of resistance like warm butter. The hot flicker and glow of old bones, souvenirs of old lives, old tangibilities burning away to nothing, letting someone go. You’ve always liked how it felt to use things that can kill to do good.

You got your hand on the First Blade, and it burned up your arm into the Mark, into your veins, into your head, into your soul. It felt like your yes to Alistair in Hell, like your hunt for Cas in Purgatory. It felt like purpose and freedom and fear.

The First Blade is intention, old and overriding. You have no idea what you’ll do when you get your hand on it again; all you know is that you want to.


	19. No such thing as murder.

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/81161450867/deathandmysticism-jan-gossaert-cain-killing).)

Before Cain, there was no such thing as murder.

You can’t quite wrap your head around that. As long as you’ve known people, you’ve known what people can do.

(You got to know people pretty early. Claims adjusters who left your dad silent and slumped in his chair, his shoulders shaking, his hand clutching at bottles. Babysitters who sat themselves in front of the TV and told you to shut Sammy up when he needed to be fed or entertained or his diaper changed. Teachers who looked at your skinned knuckles and thrift-store clothes and unfinished homework, and sighed and wrote you off. Pool hustlers--while you were still learning how to be one yourself--whose eyes gleamed and lips parted when you ran low on cash. Store clerks sometimes, too, and truckers, and all manner of lonely sons of bitches at interstate rest stops or filthy bar rails. Even now you’re an adult and it’s all so fucking old, there are still motel clerks who jack up the price when you check in after midnight, who side-eye your bloodstains and ground-in grave dirt but take your money anyway. There are always Gordon Walkers, and Benders, and Gibsons, and fake fucking Thinmen. There are always demons.)

You can’t quite believe there was ever a time when people killing each other was an _invention_.


	20. He's softer now.

(Inspired by [this gifset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/105078824519/hes-softer-now-theres-uncertainty-in-the-slope).)

He’s softer now. There’s uncertainty in the slope of his shoulders, the tilt of his head. He moves his mouth without intention, lost for words; presses it into a smile that makes you remember the existence of the word ‘bashful’. You look at his eyes and think something’s cracked open behind them.

There was nothing soft about the thing he used to be. The thing that funneled blistering light relentlessly into the core of you, moved you with fear and glory, then _moved_ you. Used you to serve its purpose, then raised your hands and funneled right back out. The thing that’s taken your dad away three times now.

_(I am not your father.)_

_(I serve Heaven. I don’t serve man, and I certainly don’t serve you.)_

_(I’m not your father.)_

You catch yourself wondering what happened to him, and tell yourself you don’t care. If life’s made him softer, well, it’s made you harder. Things even out.

He found you at the Center; he broke you out; he fed you. The cracked-open thing behind his eyes wants you to forgive it, wants it so much it’s pathetic.

You want to know what he thinks you could forgive him for.


	21. Demon

(Inspired by [this gifset](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/106874174664/its-not-like-coming-back-from-hell-not-that-you).)

It’s not like coming back from Hell. Not that you remember the moment itself--you don’t, and you’ve never asked Cas why you don’t, and you never will--but you remember the first moment of clarity afterwards, the first time you looked back and really saw the things you’d felt and done. The things you’d stopped feeling and started doing.

Coming back from the demon’s not the same. After the demon, in that first clear moment of really seeing what you did and didn’t do, what you felt and didn’t feel, it’s a whole different disappointment.

What you did as a demon is nothing, fucking _nothing_ to what you did in Hell. Doesn’t that just say it all right there: you did worse when you weren’t even all the way gone than you did when you’d gone the whole nine. You threw yourself into earning your black eyes more than you lived it up when they were given to you on a blood-drenched platter.

Maybe you value hard work more than handouts. Or maybe you’re an ungrateful sonofabitch. (It’s not that you wanted what the Mark gave you, any more than you’d wanted it from Hell. It’s just that, by now, you’ve lost the little spark of indignation at the back of your mind that used to insist you didn’t really deserve what you were getting. So maybe you’re just not great at owning your accomplishments.)

You’re still chained up but you’re not struggling, not anymore, and Sam and Cas are looking at you with kind eyes and soft smiles, like they’re proud. Like they always knew you could be pulled back; like you’re something worth the effort.

Whatever it is they think they see, you know it’s not you at all.


	22. Circling

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/145744747419/when-the-angels-were-thrown-out-of-heaven-they).)

When the angels were thrown out of Heaven, they courted you constantly.

You didn’t tell him that, when he tracked you down. You let him see all your mundane, human mess--”let”, hell; there was so much of that shit, you don’t know how you could’ve kept it hidden--but you never mentioned the other stuff. The voices that had whispered in your head, promising before cajoling before threatening. The dreams that had blinded you, turned you on, woke you up gasping or crying or exhausted. The feeling that you were never alone.

Knowing you were never alone.

_You are acquainted with us,_ they’d said. _You know our glory, and your purpose. You have lived so long without either. Don’t you miss them? Are you not ready for peace?_

You’d laughed at that. You hadn’t forgotten what his voice sounded like all those years ago, how his persuasion felt inside you. It hadn’t been peace. But he’d felt right, somehow, and all those other angels, their voices had sounded wrong. Their pressure in your head had been jagged and ill-fitting and _wrong_. You’d told them _No, no, no._ You’d weathered their displeasure. You hadn’t let yourself even think his name in case it registered as a prayer. As a _Yes._

The courting dried up long before he found you. Still, when you realised the man standing hopefully in front of you wasn’t your dad, your first, instinctive thought was _No, no, no._


	23. Blade

(Inspired by [this picture](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/149958457549/cosmictuesdays-witch-of-habonim-dror-jewish). Related to [this headcanon](http://serricoj.tumblr.com/post/28183376156/in-on-the-head-of-a-pin-the-big-revelatory).)

Lucifer fills him, brimful and bloating. Castiel folds himself smaller and smaller and smaller, tucking himself into his deepest corners, wary of Lucifer’s tarnished grace as it seeps through him, as it spreads. He doesn’t want to touch it. He said yes out of necessity, not inclination. He doesn’t want to touch Lucifer’s grace.

It sprawls within him, slow and satisfied. Castiel can’t avoid it.

_Hesediel, Kerubiel, Barachiel_

Where Lucifer lolls against him, there is a scraping edge: Lucifer’s blade, grazing Castiel as Lucifer settles. Lucifer’s will to commit violence against his brethren held in abeyance in his grace, ready to be made manifest at the moment when will becomes action. Castiel’s blade waits similarly in his own grace. Since the Apocalypse taught the Host fratricide, all graces furnish blades in this way.

Even in potentia, Lucifer’s blade is icy and adamant, as unavoidable as the rest of him.

_Penemue, Tzaphqiel, Hadraniel_

There are names inscribed on Lucifer’s blade, Old Enochian sigils that resound in Castiel like cathedral bells: the names of all the angels Lucifer has slain. Angels dead since Heaven’s first war, their names long-unspoken–some nearly forgotten–carved indelibly by blasts of dying grace. Their shapes are clean-lined and precise along Lucifer’s atom-slicing edge. To look at, they’re almost beautiful.

The length of the list is devastating.

_Kamael, Dumah._

Castiel’s distress draws Lucifer’s attention. “What’s this, little brother?” he asks cheerfully, while Castiel tries, hopelessly, to fold himself smaller still. “Buyer’s remorse?” He drags Castiel from his hidden corners, undoes all his refuge creases, spreads his wings and pins them wide for bright, brutal perusal.

When he finds Castiel’s blade, his raking inspection stills.

_Rachel, Balthazar, Raphael, Jehoel, Arariel, Samandriel, Ion, Hael, Ephraim, Nuriel, Bartholomew, Theo, Daniel, Efram, Jonah, Temeluchus, Pahaliah …_

The names crowd each other, run together, overlap in layers upon layers upon layers. The curves of _Beburos_ obscure the corner of _Yomiel_ is crosshatched by the lines of _Diom_ ; the void at the centre of _Kokabiel_ is filled with the point of _Zephon_ is bisected by the angle of _Leaoc_.

The length of the list is devastating.

“My brother the war criminal,” Lucifer says, eventually. His amusement is cooler than Castiel might have expected.

But then, if Lucifer had his way, angels would inherit the earth.


End file.
